About this weblog

Here we'll explore the nexus of legal rulings, Capitol Hill
policy-making, technical standards development, and technological
innovation that creates -- and will recreate -- the networked world as we
know it. Among the topics we'll touch on: intellectual property
conflicts, technical architecture and innovation, the evolution of
copyright, private vs. public interests in Net policy-making, lobbying
and the law, and more.

Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this weblog are those of the authors and not of their respective institutions.

Not sure what the real copyright issue would be, since technically Amazon does expose this to the developer through their web services. I'm guessing this would be an implied license, but I guess the real question would be whether they are actually able to grant such a license :)

This would seem an Amazon TOS issue. Amazon is likely to object to the deep linking to images, though linking to amazon book cover images is a popular way for blogers to show the covers for books they are talking about.

As for copyright violations, this service is rather analogous to music sampling. While they are copying the entire cover, the cover is but a small fraction of the overall copyrighted work and the cover is meant for public display to attract sales. I'd hope this would be considered Fair Use.

Indeed. The one thing I think they might reasonably stipulate is that if you deep link to their book cover images, you have a link people can follow to buy books there as well. A book cover image that is a link to the page where you can order that book would be the typical example. For this collage thing, putting in a link to amazon.com where people can search for books is an option. Or even generating an imagemap, so clicking a bit of the collage goes to the appropriate book's page.

If everyone is sensible and levelheaded this should make everyone happy.